If he hadn't, her parents would never have allowed her to go. Sorry, only one Atlantic crossing per family per century. But enter a nonrelated variable and suddenly the equation doesn't hold. Martina couldn't imagine how they expected Ingo to keep her safe. Lob spitballs at stray icebergs? Ask mashers politely to leave her alone? But somehow the notion of his trailing along, a familiar and comforting figure from her earliest childhood, had reassured the ma and papa. She started packing that same afternoon. She supposed it was Ingo himself. The dullness of him. Always with the books or the toy soldiers or the model boats. Those stupid boats! Cork and balsa wood contraptions he would float in trenches specially dug in the backyard, filled with water lugged in buckets. The vividness of the memory surprised her. Martina seldom missed, or even thought about, her childhood. She was glad she'd woken up and joined the Jazz Age—that she hadn't remained stuck in time like poor Ingo, with his Sunday-school clothes and his knapsack full of poetry.
What do You think about Another Green World (2006)?
